Search form

Ethical Conduct in the Moral Right

Members of a religion are obliged to comply with its ethical principles. How good are religious people at living up to what is expected of them? Are they more ethical than atheists, for example? Let's review the evidence.

World historyStudents of world history recognize that when there are real conflicts of interest, religion, however pacifist in principle, does not restrain warlike impulses and there are many so-called religious wars. These generally have little to do with theological differences and are mostly sparked by friction over vital resources, like land, oil, or employment opportunities. The religious war in Northern Ireland revolved around jobs and houses held by Protestants and desired by Catholics, for instance.

Bad peopleThere is a high level of religious faith in jails, even among the most violent and depraved offenders. Criminal convictions and long prison terms (or even the death penalty) may encourage prisoners to reflect on the error of their ways. Religious conversion in such cases is a sort of "plea bargain" according to which more lenient treatment is anticipated from parole boards, prison officials, and even in the next life. The fact that some of the worst people can be so religious implies that religiosity is no guarantee of ethical behavior.

ResearchDespite a widespread perception that religious people should behave more ethically in general, researchers find little evidence that religious people either think or behave more ethically (1). One study, found that atheists were significantly less likely than religious students to cheat on an exam (2).

Psychologists find that religious belief stunts moral development, because it commits people to a dogma, or formula, rather than working out ethical solutions for themselves (the highest stage of moral development known as post-conventional morality).

Fundamentalist religions may undermine moral reasoning. People who "know" that they are saved, may be relatively unconcerned about who is hurt by their actions in this world. A Roper survey found that after being "born again," people are more likely to drive drunk, use illegal drugs, and engage in illicit sex (3).

Religious texts exhort people to behave charitably and with compassion but social scientists over the decades find little evidence of this affecting actions. Among the research findings assembled by sociologist Alfie Kohn (4), were the following:

A 1950 study of Episcopalians found no relationship between involvement in religious activities and charitable acts.

A 1960 questionnaire study found that belief in God was only slightly related to altruism. Attendance at religious services was completely unrelated to altruism.

In 1984, interviews with 700 residents of a medium-sized city found that religious people were not particularly good citizens, as determined by involvement with neighbors and participation in local organizations.

People who rescued Jews in Nazi Germany were not any more religious than non rescuers.

Religious people are more intolerant of ethnic minorities.

A 1992 Gallup study (5) showed, however, that church members are more likely to claim they make charitable donations than non members are (78 percent vs. 66 percent).

A 2006 study found that among developed countries, those with a higher proportion of religious believers had more homicides, more teen births, and more venereal disease (5).

A 2008 study of ethics in high schools (6) found little difference between religious and secular independent schools in self-reported stealing (19 vs. 21 percent, respectively), or lying to parents (83 vs. 78 percent), but cheating was more common in religious schools (63 vs. 47 percent).

If indeed there are ethical differences between religious believers and atheists, a galloping horse wouldn't notice the difference. Neither can a catholic priest. According to the late Rev Richard John Neuhaus:

One would like to think that people who think of themselves as devout Christians would also behave in a manner that is in accord with Christian ethics. But pastorally and existentially, I know that that is not the case - and never has been the case.

Being an Athiest means you need to use philosophy to work out your moral code. In that case, the welfare of other people will trump religious dogma, which is a boon to society. Religion is detrimental in all ways.

This is a pedestrian essay with ridiculous observations. E.g, "The fact that some of the worst people can be so religious implies that religiosity is no guarantee of ethical behavior."

Well duh? That's why Christians call themselves "sinners".

And the author makes the dopier mistake of confusing religious affiliation with actual belief. Try reading the essay "On the Meaning of Contemporary Atheism" by Jacques Maritain. It was written in 1949, but is even more incisive today. Maritain fully elucidates both the nature of "practical atheism" and the failure of committed Christians to live up to Christianity's ideals. I.e., the church is populated by both sinners and saints.

And finally, public policy expert Arthur C. Brooks has demonstrated clearly that religious people are more generous than secular people in almost every dimension and income level. See his book, "Who really cares..." BTW, he has no ax to grind one way or another.

Being an atheist is fine by me. It's just nothing to write home about...

If you care to briefly refer to the blog, then you would notice that the main claim is not that people who truly believe in religions are amoral; it is a moral comparison between people who think of themselves as religious and those who don't. The main point is that if people within these religions practiced the basic tenants of their religion of choice then they would behave in a moral and ethical fashion. What Barber is quickly recognizing is that the affirmation of a religious moral system does not correlate with people who carry out strong moral decisions. Furthermore, the people who are not "true believers" are in effect lying by saying that they are religious, but they are subscribing to the organized system of religion, in which it is amoral to lie, further pushing the point that a person who affirms organized religion is not necessarily a person who affirms strong moral decisions.

If you care to briefly refer to the blog, then you would notice that the main claim is not that people who truly believe in religions are amoral; it is a moral comparison between people who think of themselves as religious and those who don't. The main point is that if people within these religions practiced the basic tenants of their religion of choice then they would behave in a moral and ethical fashion. What Barber is quickly recognizing is that the affirmation of a religious moral system does not correlate with people who carry out strong moral decisions. Furthermore, the people who are not "true believers" are in effect lying by saying that they are religious, but they are subscribing to the organized system of religion, in which it is amoral to lie, further pushing the point that a person who affirms organized religion is not necessarily a person who affirms strong moral decisions.

I'm sure that there have been bank robbers who were baptist, in all seriousness but it is you who are missing the mark.

You are over personalizing this article, attempting to ridicule Barber's work by oversimplifying his arguments to the point that they are applied to single individuals rather than to society as a whole. Furthermore, Barber is arguing about all religions - not just Christianity. Externalize, for a moment, and consider the actions of Islamic fundamentalists. Their being religious won't make them rob a bank, but it might motivate them to hijack an airplane and fly it into a building. Islam is used every day to support the oppression of women, making rape victims the guilty parties.

Now return to Christianity. Historically, it has been used to oppress women, saying that they are the root of evil in the world, containing the spark of original sin, and women have not been allowed to rise above the power of being a nun until very recently, supporting a traditional patriarchal paradigm analogous to (if perhaps not as extreme as) that of Islamic nations. Also, it has silenced scientific progress from Copernicus to Darwin. Today, Christianity's extremism has been moderated through years of progress, but the vestigial traces of its moral impropriety still remain.

Oh, puhleeze. It's impossible for me to simplify Barber's work any more than he already has. Because it's simplistically inane.

The fact that he's arguing universally against all religions without any kind discrimination and any understanding of theological reasoning implies that he's capable of tossing out mind dumps of secular bile and that's about it.

Has the Church been guilty of crimes? Of course. The Church admits that. It admits that it's populated by human beings who can fail the test of it's fundamental precepts. So what else is new?

Your blood red denunciation of Christianity without any kind of philosophical and historical nuance has you coming off just as intellectually stunted as Barber. Hey I wonder...?

Please. No one is writing specifically against you and your personal beliefs, so please stop arguing as though we have.

I find it strange that you disapprove of arguing against all religions are a whole, as opposed to only Christianity, or Islam, etc. The research he cites don’t specifically state one religion over another so it wouldn’t make sense for the article to do otherwise. Besides, the point isn’t to talk about what is wrong in religions, but that belief in a higher power and dogma are not enough to make people act ethically proper. You can say people are fallible all you like, but that is the point. Religious practices often imply that a follower is either inherently good, or resists the urge to be otherwise through belief. That the statistics say otherwise shows what some (I repeat: some, not all) people have denied; that belief in religion is not necessary for moral behavior, which in itself undermines a number of close-held religious beliefs.

"I suppose we'll have to shut down all the schools, hospitals, soup kitchens and homeless shelters that were created and sustained by morally stunted religious motivation.

And say, when are the atheists gonna start up the same in the name of secularism?"

As the religiously motivated branches of these organizations are prone to ethical violations and detrimental practices, I think this would be a good starting point! There are no truly sustained religious hospitals in the USA as all hospitals receive SECULAR funds through our SECULAR GOVERNMENT silly head...

Also hospitals have never really been a religiously friendly environment in the first place, going against everything the bible teaches its uneducated narrow-minded followers. please not prayer is not a medical practice and taking the power of death from imaginary friends like God(s) goes against the principles set forth in scripture.

"In America, as of 1999, 13% of all hospitals were religious (totaling 18% of all hospital beds); that's 604 out of 4,573 hospitals. [6] Despite the presence of organized religion in America, the Church has managed to scrape together only a few hospitals. Of these 604 hospitals many are a product of mergers with public, non-sectarian hospitals. Not all of these 604 hospitals are Catholic; many are Baptist, Methodist, Shriner (Masonic), Jewish, etc.

Despite the religious label, these so-called religious hospitals are more public than public hospitals. Religious hospitals get 36% of all their revenue from Medicare; public hospitals get only 27%. In addition to that 36% of public funding they get 12% of their funding from Medicaid. Of the remaining 44% of funding, 31% comes from county appropriations, 30% comes from investments, and only 5% comes from charitable contributions (not necessarily religious). The percentage of Church funding for Church-run hospitals comes to a grand total of 0.0015 percent."

"Of the 13% of religious hospitals, all of them are maintained by public funds. Those public funds are not paid for exclusively by the religious, they certainly aren't supported by American churches. If the religious hospitals were to be truly religious and separated from secular governmental subsidies they would collapse. The question that the Christian apologist should be asked is, "Where are all the truly religious hospitals?" Slapping a Catholic or Methodist label upon a hospital wall isn't sufficient enough to create a truly independent, private religious hospital free from Atheist support."

The religionist is mainly dependent upon dogma and social approbation to resolve his moral conflicts, whereas the atheist must use reason, contemplation, and meditation to decide his moral issues. The religionist must only toe the line of religious authority to be moral, whereas the atheist must live with himself and his own feelingss.

For the religionist, a moral life is an almost automatic process, arrived at by passive acceptance of authority, whereas the atheist must ask constant questions and live in a condition of watchfulness to monitor his own behaviour so that it does least hurt and confers maximum benefit upon others.

It is not surprising that religionists are frequently "caught out" for their pecadillos and their respective societies punish them for their transgressions, as the morality of religions is almost totally dependent on following a set of rules unquestioningly. The violation of these rules, frequently by oversight, is a forgone certainty implicit in the very necessity for the rules in the first place.

The atheist operates without this handicap, assuming initially that all people are good, that only their motives may be bad, and moves from there to build his own moral being through experience and human empathy.

This is not to say that the religionist is inherently immoral or that the atheist is not, but only that the atheist must put conscious thought into the effort, thereby for most, being more frequently in a consciously moral state.

Perhaps the major immorality of religionists is their intolerant attitude against "non-believers", and the belief that the "non-believers" do not deserve to share in the bounty of the world or the grace of their god. In other words, for the religionist it is moral to treat the unbeliever in callous fashion, after all, he is not on the "right" side.

This latter attitude may have had some import in the studies quoted, as many religionists consider scientists and such as foes to their faith, consequently it is OK to lie to them and not cooperate.

i believe in the point of the blog; religion or lack there of does not have any affect on whether or not someone is moral or ethical.
good people are good people and the athiest only shows that you don't necessarily need god to be a good person. people do bad things whether god is present or not. if you are a good person (at least for the most part) who is religious, your reason might be god. if you are a good person who is an athiest, then you simply have another reason for it. maybe you genuinely empathise with other people. maybe it just makes you feel good.

i guess what i'm trying to say is that a moral person will try to make moral decisions, period. it does not matter what thier reason is.

either way, the point of the blog still stands; no religion or religious affiliation has any influence people's behavior ingeneral.

"Religious texts exhort people to behave charitably and with compassion but social scientists over the decades find little evidence of this affecting actions. Among the research findings assembled by sociologist Alfie Kohn"

You've got to be kidding. Look, I'm an atheist and a huge fan of EP, but you aren't being very honest. There's recent and repeatable data sets that show you to be wrong. How could you miss this? You can look into the work of Arthur Brooks, a recent study done by Google, or the book "Philanthrocaptialism" for some evidnece. These are data that control for other variables, which is a goal any research should do when trying to isolate causes or robust correlations.

I'm discounting this entire piece unless you can begin either reading before writing or start being more honest (or perhaps both).

Nor am I addressing the other fallacious points you make. This piece is so bad it's not worth any more of my time.

Or how about the recent empirical work from the universally respected evolutionary theorist David Sloan Wilson on prosociality and religion? You really aren't aware of this?

It's one thing to write outside one's expertise and get nearly everything incomplete or incorrect, but to not be familiar with the writings of Wilson, who is from your own field? Huh?

Or see what former president of the APA, Martin Seligman, has written on this. I'm not going to cite book and page numbers for you with either of these recommendations (or the others), since it would appear to serve you better if you spent more time reading generally.